And so, we emerge into a new day, better for a full night's sleep and considerably drier than yesterday. Five hours on the Royal Birkdale course yesterday was akin to Chinese water torture. The wind blew heavens hard, the rain was horizontal and after half-an-hour, the slow trickle of water down the back of the neck was turning into a torrent.

The scenes varied between the sad and the hilarious, valiant spectators huddled in empty grandstands,while one scoreboard operator just couldn't take any more and suddenly exploded with: "This is sh**. Absolute sh**", as the rain dripped from his hat. Or the bloke I passed on the eighth trying to open his flimsy order of play, which was so saturated that it simply shredded in his hands. At the food stalls, people queued not only for something hot to warm them up but for shelter - although they discovered the fatal flaw in the catering arrangements when they picked up their burgers, or whatever, because the condiments stall was outside in the driving rain. I suspect tomato ketchup fell off the menu for most.

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Want to know what the players thought? How about this from Vijay Singh: "It was miserable, miserable, miserable." Fine, how about Craig Parry. Your thoughts, sir. "Bloody miserable". OK, so no doubt there, then.

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It was hard to describe Lyle's behaviour as anything other than bad manners. It was ill-advised and disrespectful to the organisers

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Birkdale braced for the worst

Gale-force winds and rain threaten to leave the Open in tatters as players criticise "unplayable" course

• Hardy few hold heads up high at Birkdale

• Players cut up rough over Birkdale tees

• Greg Norman in his element after 'fairest' test

Multimedia

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Hearty congratulations, though, to one doughty soul who refused to be cowed. Todd Newcomb, Tom Watson's caddy, achieved what I would have thought was the near impossible in the conditions: he managed not only to light a fag but to keep it going down the fairway as the rain drove into our faces. How did he do that?

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Strange the snippets of conversation you hear, too. While the weather was at its absolute worst and I was sheltering by the grandstand at the fifth, I was passed by the genial John Murray, one of the BBC Radio Five Live commentary team here, with Bernard Gallacher, former Ryder Cup star turned pundit, who was Murray's partner following the Justin Rose match on Thursday. The conversational gem that floated towards me through the rain came from Gallacher, who was telling Murray earnestly: "Oh yes. Ice cream. Yes, the best ice cream comes from Venice." Um, no, I don't know what that was about either.

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Actually, Murray found himself with a bit of a problem this morning as he was detailed to follow Greg Norman, the two-times Open winner. We got a sample of it late on Thursday night when Norman was called to his post-round press conference in the media centre. Everything was going smoothly until a whispered buzz went around from hack to hack and heads turned towards the back of the room where the slight figure of a woman was sitting very demurely, cross-legged. For it was none other than Chris Evert, the former doyen of Wimbledon and now, of course, Mrs Greg Norman.

Norman's press conference was over in a flash and a huddle formed around the petite Mrs Norman, who is just a slip of a thing and makes you wonder how she managed to crash tennis balls over the net to somewhat more athletic rivals like Martina Navratilova.

Anyway, Mrs Norman was out on the course yesterday, dressed from head to toe in black waterproofs, save for an orange bobble that kept her sleek pony-tail in place. As soon as the Beeb's producers heard she was around, they detailed Murray to have a word. Which scared the life out of him, as he admitted: "I have always been daunted by her". That didn't stop the ever-professional Murray from attempting to have a word.

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Incidentally, a propos of nothing, am I the only one who thinks Murray is the best football commentator on Five Live? Not only is his Geordie lilt attractive, he has excellent powers of description, a keen sense of humour and no raging ego - unlike some we could mention. Time he was promoted.

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And just to finish with the weather, there was lots of broken equipment lying around the course at the height of the gales yesterday. Justin Rose had to call for a new umbrella after his was straightened by the wind as he finished the ninth hole, but more intriguing was the broken driver found at one tee by stewards, who couldn't possibly say who had left it there. However, it did seem to appear shortly after England's Simon Dyson, who endured a tortuous round for 12 over par, had passed that way with a face full of more thunder and lightning than even Royal Birkdale's appalling weather could offer. Never mind, Simon. Just think: there is even more rain to come.